The tale relates that the Great Sage Sun, being at the end of his devices, sprang up on a cloud of good omen, mounted his somersault, and turned straight for Jambudvīpa, to make his bow at Mount Wudang and petition the Heaven-Honoured One Who Sweeps Away Demons, that the calamity fallen upon Tripitaka, Eight Rules, Sha Monk and the whole host of heavenly soldiers might be undone.
He did not once halt in the middle air, and before a day was out he had sighted the Patriarch's immortal precinct. Gently he pressed down the head of his cloud, and fixing his eyes he looked about him. A fine place it was:
A vast bulwark to the south and east, a divine peak at the middle of heaven.
Lotus Peak stands sheer and commanding; Purple Canopy Ridge towers craggy and high.
Where the Nine Rivers' waters end, Jing and Yang stretch far;
where the hills of the Hundred Yue run on, Wings and Chariot crowd the sky.
Above lie the jewelled grottoes of the Grand Void, the numinous terrace of the Vermilion Land.
From six-and-thirty palaces the golden chimes resound;
by hundreds, thousands, myriads the pilgrims come with incense.
Here Shun made his progress and Yu offered prayer; here are tablets of jade and writings of gold.
About the towers and galleries the blue birds fly; the banners and streamers shake out their crimson skirts.
Earth set this famous mountain to lord it over the cosmos;
Heaven opened this immortal precinct to pierce the empty void.
A few trees of langmei are just now in flower;
the jasper grasses that fill the mountain have all unfurled their colour.
Dragons lie hidden at the bottom of the ravines; tigers crouch within the cliffs.
Something secret holds a note as though it were pleading; the tame deer come near and walk beside men.
White cranes, companions of the clouds, roost in the ancient junipers;
blue simurghs and cinnabar phoenixes cry toward the sun.
The Jade Void's Preceptor-Minister — here is the ground of true immortals;
the Golden Portal's benevolence — here is the gate that orders the age.
The Patriarch, Highest Emperor, was born of the King of Jingle and his queen Shansheng, who dreamed that she swallowed the light of the sun and woke to find herself with child. She carried him fourteen months, and in the first year of the Kaihuang reign, the year jiachen, on the first day of the third month at the hour of noon, he came down and was born in the royal palace. That Sire:
Valiant while yet a child, numinous once grown.
He would not rule from the throne, bent only on the practice of the Way.
His father and mother could scarcely restrain him; he cast off the imperial palace.
He probed the mystery and entered into stillness, here within this mountain.
His merit complete and his practice full, in broad day he flew aloft.
The Jade Emperor decreed his style: the name of the True Warrior.
In the Mystic Void he answers above; tortoise and snake are joined in his form.
Through the round of heaven and the six directions, all call him the Myriad Numina.
Nothing so hidden that he does not discern it, nothing so manifest that he does not bring it to pass.
At a kalpa's ending and a kalpa's beginning, he cuts down the demon essences.
The Great Sage Sun, taking his pleasure in the sights of that immortal precinct, came presently to the First Gate of Heaven, the Second, and the Third. Arriving outside the Palace of Great Harmony, he saw all at once, amid the auspicious light and propitious vapours, five hundred numinous officers thronging together. One of them came forward to meet him. “Who is it that comes there?”
“I am Sun Wukong, Great Sage Equal to Heaven,” said the Great Sage, “and I would see the Preceptor-Minister.”
The officers, hearing this, reported it at once, and the Patriarch came down from his hall directly and received him into the Palace of Great Harmony. Pilgrim made his bow. “I have one matter with which to trouble you.”
“What matter?”
“Escorting the Tang Monk to fetch scriptures in the Western Heaven,” said Pilgrim, “we have met with peril on the road. Coming to Aparagodānīya, there is a mountain called Little Western Heaven, and in the Monastery of Little Thunderclap there is a fiend. My master, having got in at the mountain gate, saw arhats, guardians, bhikṣus and holy monks ranged in order, and taking them for true Buddhas he had no sooner thrown himself down to worship than he was seized and bound. I, for my part, failed of my guard, and he flung out a pair of golden cymbals and clapped me inside them: not a hair's crack anywhere, and their mouths closed like pincers.
“It was much owing to the Golden-Headed Guardian that a memorial was laid before the Jade Emperor, who commissioned the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions to come down that very night; and still they could not prise the things apart. Happily Kang the Golden Dragon got his horn through into the cymbals and delivered me out — but I smashed the cymbals and startled the monster awake. In the thick of the pursuit he cast out a white cloth bundle and bagged the whole of us, myself and the Twenty-Eight Mansions and the Guardians of the Five Quarters, and roped us up besides.
“That night I made my escape and freed the stellar host and my Tang Monk and the rest. Afterwards, going back for the robe and bowl, I woke the monster again and fought a running battle with the heavenly troops. He brought out his bundle a second time, and while he was handling it I, knowing the tune from before, got away. The rest of them he bagged again as before. I am at the end of my devices, and have come expressly to beg the Preceptor-Minister for a lending of strength.”
“In my day,” said the Patriarch, “I held the north in awe, governed in the office of the True Warrior, and cut down the demons and heterodoxies of the world — and that was by decree of the Jade Emperor. Afterwards, with hair unbound and feet unshod, treading the coiling serpent and the divine tortoise, leading the Five Thunder divine generals, the great hornless dragons and the lions, the fierce beasts and venomous dragons, I subdued the black-vapour miasma of the northeast — and that was at the talisman-summons of the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Beginning. These days I take my quiet ease on Mount Wudang and rest at leisure in the Hall of Great Harmony; sea and mountain have long been at peace, and heaven and earth clear and settled.
“Yet in my Jambudvīpa and the Northern Continent of Kuru the fiends are cut down and the evil ghosts keep their tracks hidden; and now that the Great Sage has condescended to come down, I cannot but act. Only, there is no command from the upper realm, and I dare not move shield and spear unbidden. Were I to dispatch the host of gods by my own authority, I fear the Jade Emperor would find me at fault; were I flatly to refuse the Great Sage, that again would be to go against what is owed between us. I reckon that though there be demons on that western road, they will not amount to a great harm. I shall now assign Tortoise and Snake, my two generals, together with the five great divine dragons, to lend you strength; they will assuredly take the fiend and deliver your master out of his calamity.”
Pilgrim made his thanks to the Patriarch and set off at once with Tortoise, Snake and the dragon gods, each bringing his crack troops, back to the border of the Western Continent. Before a day was out they reached the Monastery of Little Thunderclap, pressed down their cloud-heads, and went straight up outside the mountain gate to call for battle.
Now the Yellow-Brow Great King had gathered his fiends below the treasure pavilion and was saying, “Sun the Pilgrim has not come these two days; there is no knowing what quarter he has gone off to for troops.” He had not finished speaking when a small fiend at the front gate reported, “Pilgrim has brought several dragon, snake and tortoise shapes, and they are calling for battle outside the gate.”
“How did this monkey come by dragon and snake and tortoise shapes?” said the fiend. “Creatures of this sort — from what quarter do they come?” He put on his armour at once, walked out of the mountain gate and called aloud, “Which road's dragon gods are you, that you dare intrude upon my immortal precinct?”
The five dragons and the two generals, imposing of aspect and brisk of spirit, shouted back at him. “You wretched fiend! We are the five dragon gods and the two generals Tortoise and Snake, from before the Heaven-Honoured One Who Sweeps Away Demons, Lord of the Undifferentiated Origin, of the Palace of Great Harmony on Mount Wudang. Today at the Great Sage Equal to Heaven's invitation, and by our Heaven-Honoured One's talisman-summons, we are come here to take you. Send out the Tang Monk and the star-gods and the rest at once, that you may escape death; otherwise we shall hack the fiends of this whole mountain to pieces and burn these few halls of yours to ashes.”
The monster, hearing this, was greatly enraged. “What powers have these beasts, that they dare talk so big? Don't run — taste this rod of mine!”
The five dragons overturned the clouds and made rain, the two generals scattered earth and flung up sand, and all of them, with spears and knives and swords and halberds in hand, rushed him in a body; and the Great Sage Sun came on behind with his iron rod. A fine battle this was:
The savage fiend plied his arms; the Pilgrim sought for troops.
The savage fiend plied his arms, usurping a jewelled tower and setting up images of the Buddha;
the Pilgrim sought for troops, journeying far to a precious precinct to borrow dragon gods.
Tortoise and Snake brought forth water and fire; the fiend set knife and spear in motion.
The five dragons came by command to the western road;
the Pilgrim, for his master's sake, brought up the rear.
Swords and halberds, bright with light, shook out coloured lightning;
spears and knives, flashing clear, glinted like a rainbow.
This one's wolf-tooth club was strong for all that it was short and pliant;
that one's gold-banded rod went as he willed and answered his heart.
One heard only the crack and thud of it, a noise like firecrackers,
and a ringing measure like the striking of metal.
Water and fire came together to campaign against the monster;
knife and spear thronged and circled the sprite.
The battle-cries startled the wolves and tigers; the uproar shook the ghosts and gods.
The mêlée was just at the point where neither could win,
when the fiend took out his treasure again.
Pilgrim led the five dragons and the two generals, and they had fought the fiend half a double-hour when he untied his bundle and took it in hand. Pilgrim saw it and his heart shook. “Have a care, gentlemen!” he called out. But the dragon gods and Snake and Tortoise did not know what having a care meant; every one of them halted his weapon and came up close to fend him off. With a flourish and a sound the fiend flung the bundle up, and the Great Sage Sun could not stop for the five dragons and the two generals: he mounted his somersault, sprang into the ninth heaven and got clear. The dragon gods and Tortoise and Snake he bagged up in the one bundle and carried off again.
The fiend, victorious, went back to the monastery, roped them too, and had them carried into the cellar and covered over; of which no more.
Look at the Great Sage: he came down off his cloud and lay sprawled aslant on the mountain peak, spiritless and dejected. “That monster is uncommonly dangerous,” he said in vexation; and without knowing it he had closed his eyes and seemed to be asleep.
Of a sudden he heard someone calling. “Great Sage, do not feign sleep! Bestir yourself and go quickly for help — your master's life hangs upon a moment.” Pilgrim opened his eyes with a start, sprang up and looked: it was the Merit Star on duty for the day.
“You hairy godling,” Pilgrim shouted at him, “in which quarter have you been greedy for blood-offerings all this while, never coming to muster, and now you come and startle me? Put out your ankle-bone and let Old Monkey give it a couple of raps to relieve my spleen.”
The Merit Star made haste to bow. “Great Sage, you are the merry immortal of the world of men — what spleen have you to relieve? We had long ago the Bodhisattva's command that we should guard the Tang Monk unseen; and together with the local gods and the rest we dare not leave his side even for a moment, and so cannot come often to pay our respects. How is it that we are blamed for it instead?”
“If you are guarding him,” said Pilgrim, “then where has the fiend penned up those star-gods, the guardians, the monastery-protectors and my master and the rest? What sufferings do they bear?”
“Your master and your fellow-disciples are all strung up under the gallery of the treasure hall,” said the Merit Star, “and the stellar host and the rest are all shut in the cellar, suffering there. These two days there was no word of the Great Sage; just now I saw the fiend take the divine dragons and Tortoise and Snake as well and put them into the cellar too, and only then did I know they were troops the Great Sage had asked for. So your humble god came expressly to look for you. Let the Great Sage not plead weariness, but by all means go quickly once more for aid.”
Pilgrim, hearing him come to this, shed tears in spite of himself. “I am ashamed now to go up to the palaces of Heaven, ashamed to come before the treasuries of the sea; I dread being asked the reason of it by the Bodhisattva, and shrink from the sight of the Tathāgata's jade image. Those just carried off were the Tortoise and Snake and the five dragons, the holy company of the Preceptor-Minister True Warrior. It leaves me no further quarter to ask help of. What is to be done?”
The Merit Star smiled. “Let the Great Sage set his mind at ease. Your humble god calls to mind one place with crack troops; fetch them and the thing can certainly be subdued. Just now the Great Sage went to Wudang, which is in the land of Jambudvīpa. This force too is in Jambudvīpa, at Pin City on Mount Xuyi — which is the Sizhou of today. There is there a Great Sage Bodhisattva King and Preceptor of the Realm, whose divine powers are vast; and under him is a disciple called the Little Prince Zhang, and four great divine generals besides: in years past they subdued the Water Mother. Go yourself now and ask him; if he comes and bestows his help, you may certainly take the fiend and rescue your master.”
Pilgrim was glad at heart. “Do you go and guard my master, and let no harm come to him, while Old Monkey goes to ask.”
Pilgrim sprang up on his somersault cloud, got clear of the fiend's ground, and made straight for Mount Xuyi; before a day was out he had arrived. He looked closely: a fine place indeed:
To the south it nears the river fords, to the north it overlooks the Huai;
eastward it runs out to the hills of the sea, westward it joins Fengfu.
On the mountain top are towers and belvederes rearing high;
in the mountain's hollow are ravine springs welling up in flood.
Craggy strange rocks; coiling, handsome, lofty pines.
Fruits of a hundred kinds are fresh as their seasons come;
blossoming sprays of a thousand sorts open to meet the sun.
People, like an array of ants, come and go in numbers;
boats, like a rank of wild geese, return in a broad company.
Above are the Auspicious Cliff Abbey, the Eastern Marchmount Palace, the Shrine of the Five Manifestations and the Tortoise Hill Monastery,
where bell-notes and incense-smoke rush up to the blue empyrean;
and there are besides the Crystal Spring, the Five Pagoda Vale, the Terrace of the Eight Immortals and the Apricot Blossom Garden,
where the hill's light and the trees' colour shine upon Pin City.
White clouds lie athwart and do not cross; hidden birds, weary, still cry out.
What talk is there of the beauty of Tai and Song, of Heng and Hua?
This place is an immortal prospect, like Penglai and Yingzhou.
The Great Sage could not have done with looking. He crossed straight over the Huai River, entered Pin City, and came to the outer gate of the Great Sage Meditation Monastery. He saw besides the halls standing lofty, the long galleries painted bright, and a jewelled pagoda rearing up. Truly:
It pierces cloud and leans on the Milky Way, a thousand zhàng high;
look up, and its golden vase runs through the blue void.
Above and below its light hangs fixed upon the cosmos;
east and west, casting no shadow, it shines on lattice and blind.
The wind stirs the precious bells and one hears the music of heaven;
the sun lights the ice-cold dragon-coils that face the Brahma hall.
Numinous birds that fly and roost there seem at times to be pleading;
and far off one gazes on the Huai, boundless beyond measure.
Pilgrim looked as he went, and came straight to the foot of the second gate. The Bodhisattva King and Preceptor of the Realm knew of it already, and came out of the gate with the Little Prince Zhang to welcome him. When they had met and the courtesies were done, Pilgrim spoke.
“I am escorting the Tang Monk to fetch scriptures in the Western Heaven. On the road there is a Monastery of Little Thunderclap, and in it a Yellow-Brow fiend who counterfeits the Buddha Patriarch. My master could not tell the true from the false; he knelt at once, and was taken. He clapped his golden cymbals over me besides, and it was owing to Heaven's sending down the star-gods that I got out. I smashed the cymbals and fought him for it, and he brought out a cloth bundle and bagged the whole lot — the heavenly gods, the guardians, the monastery-protectors, my master and my fellow-disciples.
“I went before this to Mount Wudang to ask the Dark Heaven Highest Emperor for aid; he dispatched the five dragons and Tortoise and Snake to take the fiend, and they too were bagged up in the one bundle. Your disciple is without prop or stay, and so has come to beg the Bodhisattva to put forth his majesty and might — the divine power that once subdued the Water Mother, the excellent skill that rescued the living — and go with your disciple to deliver my master out of this calamity. That the scriptures may be got and brought back, handed down forever in the Middle Kingdom, exalting the wisdom of our Buddha and raising up the pāramitā of prajñā.”
“This affair of yours today,” said the King and Preceptor, “is truly for the flourishing of our Buddha's teaching, and by rights I should go myself. But the season is early summer, just when the Huai is in flood. I have lately taken the Water Ape Great Sage, and that creature grows lively the moment he meets water. I fear that if I go he will seize the opening and make mischief, and there will be no god here able to deal with him. I shall now send my young disciple with the four generals to go and lend you strength: let them refine the fiend and subdue him.”
Pilgrim gave thanks, and at once with the four generals and the Little Prince Zhang mounted cloud again for Little Western Heaven, going straight to the Monastery of Little Thunderclap. The Little Prince Zhang wielded a mulberry-white spear, the four great generals brandished four Kunwu swords, and with the Great Sage Sun they went up to hurl challenge and abuse.
The small fiends went in with word again, and the fiend king led out his crowd once more with drums and shouting. “Ape! Whom have you got to come this time?”
Before he had finished, the Little Prince Zhang signalled the four generals and shouted, “You wretched fiend! Have you no flesh upon your face, that you do not know who we are, standing here?”
“What quarter's young general is this,” said the fiend king, “that dares come and lend him strength?”
“I am a disciple of the Great Sage Bodhisattva King and Preceptor of the Realm of Sizhou, leading four great divine generals, and I am here by command to take you.”
The fiend king laughed. “What warlike skill has this child, that he presumes to come here and be so pert?”
“You would know my skill?” said the prince. “Wait while I tell it out:
My forebears dwelt in the Land of Flowing Sands in the western country;
my father was king of that sandy realm.
From childhood my body was full of sickness and pain;
my fate ran against the Canopy star, and a baleful star obstructed it.
Because my teacher longed from afar for the formula of long life,
it fell to my lot to meet him, and he gave me a prescription.
Half a grain of cinnabar drove the sickness away and back;
I chose to follow him in practice and not to be a king.
My study perfected, I do not age, and share the span of heaven;
my face is forever that of a youth.
I have hastened to the Dragon-Flower Assembly; I have ridden cloud to the Buddha's hall.
I have caught mist and seized wind and gathered in water-monsters;
taken dragons and mastered tigers and held the mountain ground.
To comfort the people I raised a stūpa high;
to still the sea I made bright the deep light of the relics.
The point of my mulberry-white spear can bind a monster;
the sleeve of my pale black robe subdues a fiend.
And now, at quiet ease within Pin City,
over the wide earth my name is spread and they speak of Little Zhang!
The fiend king heard him out and said with a faint cold laugh, “You there, prince — you gave up a kingdom and followed that Bodhisattva King and Preceptor: what art of long life and no ageing is it you have cultivated? You are fit only to catch water-monsters in the Huai. How is it you have listened to Sun the Pilgrim's lying nonsense and come a thousand hills and ten thousand streams to hand over your life here? Let us see whether you can live long, whether you can escape ageing!”
Little Zhang heard him out, and in a great rage of heart levelled his spear and thrust straight at his face; the four great generals rushed him in a body and attacked together; and the Great Sage Sun came up with his iron rod and struck as well. A fine fiend — openly unafraid, he swung that short pliant wolf-tooth club of his, warding to the left and parrying to the right, thrusting straight and charging sidelong. A fine battle it was:
The little prince, the mulberry-white spear, and the four Kunwu swords stronger still. Wukong too plied his gold-banded rod; with one heart they circled and beset the fiend king. The fiend king's divine powers were great indeed; not a hair's breadth afraid, he fended them off left and right. The wolf-tooth club was a treasure from among the Buddhas; sword-hack and spear-swing could do it no hurt. One heard only the wild wind roaring and roaring; one saw besides the baleful vapour spreading vast and dim. That one, bent on longing for the mortal world, was playing at his powers; this one, single-hearted in worshipping the Buddha, was after the scripture-rolls. Several bouts of galloping to and fro; several turns of raging wildly. Spouting cloud and mist, shutting out the three luminaries; rousing anger and harbouring wrath, and neither of them good. For a long while the unsurpassed law of the Three Vehicles brought the hundred arts to grapple bitterly with one another.
The whole company fought a long while and neither could win. The fiend untied his bundle again. “Have a care, gentlemen!” Pilgrim called out again — but the prince and the rest did not know what “have a care” meant. With a slippery sound the monster bagged the four great generals and the prince, all in the one bundle, and carried them off. Only Pilgrim, knowing beforehand, had got away.
The fiend king, victorious, went back to the monastery, had ropes fetched and the captives bound, and sent them into the cellar, sealed fast and locked; of which no more.
This Pilgrim sprang up on his somersault cloud and rose into the air; and seeing the monster withdraw his troops and shut the gate, he pressed down his auspicious light, stood upon the western hillside, and gazing out in grief cried, “O master! I—”
—ever since I took the teaching and entered the grove of meditation,
deep has been the Bodhisattva's grace in freeing me from calamity.
I guarded you westward in the search for the Great Way,
helping you together toward the Thunderclap above.
I thought only of a level road, winding though it might be;
who would have looked for a towering monster's inroad?
A hundred schemes and a thousand devices, and still it is hard to save you;
begging east and pleading west, I have wearied my heart for nothing.
Just at the Great Sage's bitterest moment, he saw of a sudden a cloud of many colours come down to earth out of the southwest, and a great rain scattering all over the hilltop, and someone called, “Wukong, do you know me?” Pilgrim hurried forward to look, and that person was —
Great ears, a broad jaw, a square-set face; stumpy shoulders, a full belly, a fat frame.
A breast full of spring feeling, brimming with delight;
two eyes like autumn ripples, their light swaying and swaying.
Loose sleeves floating free, and blessing in plenty;
straw sandals unconstrained, and spirit in strength.
First of the venerable ones in the Land of Ultimate Bliss —
hail, Maitreya, the laughing monk.
Pilgrim saw him and bowed at once. “Buddha Patriarch come from the east, where are you going? Your disciple failed to stand aside — a thousand faults, a thousand faults.”
“I have come expressly on account of this Little Thunderclap fiend,” said the Buddha Patriarch.
“I am much obliged for your lordship's abundant virtue and great kindness. May I ask what quarter's monster that fiend is, and what place bred the sprite? And I do not know what treasure that bundle of his may be. Would your lordship be so good as to instruct me?”
“He is a yellow-browed page of mine who had charge of the chime-stone before me. On the third day of the third month I went to the Assembly of the Primordial Beginning and left him in the palace on watch; and he made off with these few treasures of mine, and passed himself off as a Buddha and turned sprite. That bundle is my Bag of the Latter Heaven, commonly called the Bag of Human Seed. That wolf-tooth club is the mallet for striking the chime.”
Pilgrim heard him out and cried aloud, “A fine laughing monk you are! You let this page get away, and let him falsely style himself a Buddha Patriarch and do Old Monkey a mischief — you can hardly escape a charge of slack discipline in your own house.”
“For one thing it was my own want of care, and I lost a member of my household,” said Maitreya; “for another, your master's and your own demon-hindrances are not yet worked out, and so a hundred spirits have come down into the world, and you were bound to suffer calamity. I am come now to take him in for you.”
“This fiend's divine powers are vast,” said Pilgrim, “and you have no weapon at all — how will you take him?”
Maitreya laughed. “I shall set up a thatched hut at the foot of this hillside and plant a field of melons and fruit here. You go and challenge him; and when you engage, you may lose but you may not win — draw him to this melon field of mine. All my other melons will be unripe, and you shall change yourself into one big ripe one. He will certainly want a melon to eat, and I shall give you to him to eat. Once you are down in his belly, do what you please with him from inside. Then let me take that bundle of his, and bag him and carry him back.”
“The plan is a fine one,” said Pilgrim, “but how will you know the ripe melon I have turned into? And how will he consent to follow me here?”
“I am an Honoured One who governs the age,” said Maitreya, laughing, “and my eyes of wisdom are clear and high — should I not know you? Into whatever thing you change, I shall know it. I fear only that the monster will not consent to follow; so I shall teach you a spell.”
“He will certainly bag me in that bundle — how should he follow? What spell is there that would bring him?”
Maitreya laughed again. “Put out your hand.” Pilgrim stretched out his left hand at once and passed it over; and Maitreya dipped the forefinger of his right hand in the divine water of his mouth and wrote on Pilgrim's palm the single character 禁, Restrain, telling him to close his fist upon it, and to open his hand when he was face to face with the fiend, and the creature would follow.
Pilgrim gripped his fist and gladly received the instruction. With one hand he swung his iron rod, went straight outside the mountain gate and called aloud, “Fiend! Your Grandfather Sun is here again — come out quickly and let us see which of us is uppermost.”
The small fiends hurried in with word again. “How many troops has he brought this time to challenge us?” asked the fiend king. “No troops at all — only himself.”
The fiend king laughed. “That monkey's schemes are spent and his strength gone, and he has nowhere left to ask; he must be coming to give up his life.” He girded himself up neatly, took his treasure, raised that light pliant wolf-tooth club and came out at the gate. “Sun Wukong, this time there is no wriggling out.”
“You wretched monster,” Pilgrim cursed him, “why can I not wriggle out?”
“I see your schemes are spent and your strength gone, and you have nowhere left to ask; you have come alone to force it out. Once I have you, there will be no divine troops of any sort to pull you free — that is why I say there is no wriggling out.”
“This monster does not know life from death. Don't brag — take a taste of my rod!”
The fiend king, seeing him swing the rod with one hand, could not help laughing. “This monkey — look at him showing off! How does he mean to fend me off with a rod in one hand?”
“My boy,” said Pilgrim, “you could not stand up to me with both hands; and if you leave that bundle alone, you could send three or five more and they still could not beat this one hand of Old Monkey's.”
The fiend king heard him. “Very well, very well — I shall not use the treasure now, but fight you fairly and settle which of us is the better.” He raised the wolf-tooth club at once and came forward to fight. Sun the Pilgrim met him face to face, opened his fist, and swung the rod with both hands. The fiend was caught by the spell: he had no thought of falling back, did not after all play with his bundle, and only pressed on with his club in pursuit. Pilgrim made a feint, broke, and ran, and the fiend chased him straight to the foot of the western hillside.
Pilgrim saw the melon field, turned a somersault, slipped inside it, and changed himself at once into one big ripe melon, ripe and sweet. The fiend halted and looked about him on all sides, not knowing which way Pilgrim had gone. He came up to the hut and called, “Who planted these melons?”
Maitreya had changed himself into an old melon-grower, and came out of the thatched hut to answer. “Great King, the melons are of my planting.”
“Have you a ripe one?”
“I have a ripe one.”
“Pick me a ripe one — I would quench my thirst.”
Maitreya took the melon Pilgrim had become and handed it to the fiend king with both hands; and the fiend king, without looking into the matter at all, took it into his hand and opened his mouth and bit.
Pilgrim seized the chance, rolled straight down past the throat, and without waiting to see how things stood set to work with hands and feet — clawing at the guts, scraping the belly, turning somersaults and standing on his head, doing as he pleased in there. The fiend was in such pain that his teeth were bared and his mouth twisted and his eyes ran with tears, and he rolled a whole patch of melon ground into something like a threshing floor. He only cried out, “It is over, it is over — will nobody save me?”
Then Maitreya showed his true form, laughing and chuckling. “Cursed beast, do you know me?” The fiend looked up and saw him, and dropped hurriedly to his knees, rubbing his belly with both hands and knocking his head on the ground, crying only, “Master! Spare my life, spare my life — I will not dare again.”
Maitreya went forward, seized him at one grasp, untied his Bag of the Latter Heaven from him and took away his chime-mallet. “Sun Wukong, for my sake, spare his life.”
Pilgrim was bitter with hatred, and gave a fist to the left and a foot to the right, digging and pounding away inside; and the monster, in pain past all bearing, fell to the ground. “Wukong,” said Maitreya again, “he has had enough — let him be.” Only then did Pilgrim call, “Open your mouth wide and let Old Monkey out.”
The monster, though his bowels were griping, was not yet hurt at heart. As the common saying has it: a man cannot die until his heart is hurt; when blossom withers and leaf falls, it is the root that is dry. Hearing himself told to open his mouth, he bore the pain and opened it wide. Pilgrim leapt out at last and showed his true form; and just as he snatched out his rod to strike again, the Buddha Patriarch had already bagged the fiend and slung it slantwise at his waist.
Holding the chime-mallet in his hand, he said sharply, “Cursed beast! You stole the golden cymbals — where have they gone?” The monster, wanting only to be pitied and let live, said from inside the Bag of the Latter Heaven, whimpering and grumbling, “Sun Wukong broke the golden cymbals.”
“The cymbals are broken — give me back my gold.”
“The broken gold is heaped on the lotus dais in the hall.”
The Buddha Patriarch, carrying the bag and holding the chime-mallet, laughing and chuckling, called, “Wukong, come with me and find my gold to give me back.” Pilgrim, having seen such power, dared not delay, and could only lead the Buddha up the mountain, back into the monastery, to collect the broken gold. They found the mountain gate shut fast; the Buddha Patriarch pointed once with the mallet and the gate opened. Going in to look, they found the small fiends had already learned their old fiend was taken, and were each packing up the bottoms of their bags, all meaning to run for their lives and scatter.
Pilgrim struck one where he saw one and two where he saw two, and killed the whole five or seven hundred of them; and each showed his original body, and they were all hill-sprites and tree-goblins, beast-spawn and bird-fiends. The Buddha Patriarch gathered the gold into one place, blew a breath of immortal air and spoke a spell, and at once it returned to its original form: a pair of golden cymbals recovered. He took leave of Pilgrim, mounted an auspicious cloud, and went straight back to the Land of Ultimate Bliss.
Only then did the Great Sage cut down the Tang Monk, Eight Rules and Sha Monk. The Idiot, who had hung there several days and was faint with hunger, did not stop to thank the Great Sage but bent his back like a shrimp and ran off to the kitchen to look for something to eat. As it happened the fiend had just had his midday meal laid out, and because Pilgrim had challenged him he had not yet got to eat it. The Idiot saw it and ate half a pot at once; then he brought out two bowlfuls and had his master and his fellow-disciples eat two bowls apiece. And only after that did he thank Pilgrim.
When they asked how the fiend had come about, Pilgrim set out in detail how he had first asked the Patriarch for Tortoise and Snake, then asked the Great Sage for the loan of the prince, and how Maitreya had subdued him. Tripitaka heard him and could not have done with thanking; he bowed to the heavens and said, “Disciple, where are all these holy beings penned?”
“Yesterday the Merit Star on duty for the day told Old Monkey they were all inside the cellar. Eight Rules, come with me and set them free.”
The Idiot, strong now with food in him, roused his spirits, found his muckrake, went with the Great Sage to the back, broke open the cellar, untied the ropes from them all and invited them out below the treasure pavilion. Tripitaka put on his cassock and bowed his thanks upward to each of them in turn. Only then did the Great Sage send the five dragons and the two generals back to Wudang, send the Little Prince Zhang and the four generals back to Pin City, then send the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions home to the Heavenly Office, and dismiss the Guardians and the monastery-protectors each to his own precinct.
Master and disciples rested there half a day. They fed the white horse full, packed the baggage, and took the road at first light. As they left they set a fire to it, and the treasure pavilions, jewelled thrones, high galleries and lecture halls were all burnt to ashes together. And here at last:
With nothing to snag and nothing to hold them, they fled the calamity;
disaster gone and hindrance gone, they went their way free.
There is no telling yet when they will reach the Great Thunderclap; listen to the explanation in the next chapter.